CHRISTMAS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26963, 24 December 1948, Page 9

CHRISTMAS

BETHLEHEM IS NOT JOURNEY’S END Written for the Otago Daily Times by the Rev. Gardner Miller Christmas is with us once again. To young people it is the most joyous time of the year. To their elders, Christmas is a revival of memories. No other festival of the Christian year affects so many people as does Christmas. Easter has not the same geniality and does not spread its glittering mantle over young and old alike, though it belongs to the same Divine happening. Yet for countless thousands the present Christmas will be nothing short of mockery. It would not be too much to say that for them this happy season has been turned into a terrible reminder that Christianity has failed. Displaced persons, widows, orphans, maimed, the embittered and* the cynical, all lift up their voices in many parts of the world where the Gospel of the Prince of Peace has been proclaimed and declare that religion has proved a delusion. For us in this well-favoured land the ghastly reminders of war and pillage do not greet us every morning as they do in many places, and it is hard for us to enter into their feelings. Our trouble, and it is serious, is that we are complacent and at ease and have made ourselves believe that such things cannot happen to us. I am no dismal willie, but even in a Christmas article I must remind those who take heed to what I write that events in the Far East are already casting their shadows our way, and it may not be very long before we have to face something that will strip us of our complacency and remind us that there is now no such thing as a self-contained nation' in the modern world. Christmas is a Reminder Let us never forget that Christmas is the name we give to the most remarkable happening in the history of the world. It is the yearly reminder that God began a great adventure long ago, the adventure of becoming a human being and living to the full within all the risks and hazards of humanity. We have become so bemused with presents and Christmas cards and feasting that we are very apt to forget that Christmas was a very serious thing for God, and that His adventure has consequences for all of us that go beyond the rim of our earthly existence. Not for anything would I intrude into the careless jollity of a child at such a time, but I would certainly feel like shaking the grown-up who thinks of Christmas as a holiday and thinks not at all of its Divine significance. We make yearly processions to the manger. Bethlehem, once a year, becomes the most important place in the world. But Bethlehem is not journey’s end. It is where Something began, not where Something ends. The manger must not be made a fetish of worship. Christ is no longer a baby. He has grown up. He has carried a Cross, and lived in a grave. He. said He would come back, and He did and He will.

Is it because we are afraid of Him that we insist in wrapping Him in a strip of linen called a swaddling band? Have we forgotten that He stripped off the linen band when in the grave and left it there as a mute but breathtaking testimony that you cannot bury the. truth! I am still fearful of the binding bands of tradition and doctrine and nationality which conservative Christianity still persists in wrapping round Christ. Loose Him and let Him go! And let us follow Him—anywhere. I sometimes think the day is near when the unbound Christ will stalk through the land, and by the very wind of His passing level to the ground many religious prisons which are called churches, calling those who would follow Him to meet the enemy of mankind’s latest and last assault- For I have no doubt we are, fast approaching the time foretold in Scripture when the coming of the same Christ who was born in Bethlehem will bring the world to judgment. Worship Should Lead to Deeds

It may be that even our generation may be called upon to follow Him, to Calvary, to shame and exposure, to contempt and scorn and death. That is no fanciful picture. Thousands of Christians have done just that in Europe within the past 10 years. And who are we that we should escape? To be a Christian is a costly thing. It is more than worshipping. Worship that remains on its knees knows nothing of the tingling life of the dusty highway or the exhilaration of looking at the stars. It is not contemplation the world is in need of, but concern for its deeds and misdeeds, its pain and fear and destiny. Let Christmas be a joyous festival reminding us of the great simplicities but let us get Op from our knees and buckle on our armour, for the Day of Reckoning Ts at hand.